Readme for Guix Planet

Most of the common things that might change can be found in planet/config.scm.

This is also where new feeds can be added.

To build a static site

guix shell -m manifest.scm -- guile -L . -c '((@ (planet build) build-planet))'

If cache-dir is set in the configuration, then downloaded feeds will be saved here. This can add robustness to the build: if a download fails on a subsequent build, a cached value of the feed will be used instead.

This also allows us, during development, to test the parsing and building functions without having to download remote content. For example, if we have downloaded the feeds at least once:

guix shell -m manifest.scm -- guile -L . -c '((@ (planet build) build-planet) #:skip-download? #t)'

will build the entire site from the cache.

(define cache-dir #f)

In order that a failed or aborted build does not leave the output directory in an inconsistent state, we create a build id from the current timestamp and process id, and define a build directory and backup directory as follows:

(let* ((target-dir conf:target-dir)
 (build-id (string-append (number->string (current-time))
 "."
 (number->string (getpid))))
 (build-dir (string-append target-dir ".build-" build-id))
 (backup-dir (string-append target-dir ".backup-" build-id)))
 ...
 )

Build output is initially written to the temporary directory build-dir. If the build completes successfully, we rename target-dir to backup-dir then rename build-dir to target-dir (as far as I know, this is as close as we can come to an atomic update when working with directories).

We don't want backup directories to accumulate indefinitely, so the configuration setting keep-backups specifies the number to keep, and we invoke a clean-up function at the end of the build.

Pick your favourite static web server, or:

cd public
guix shell python -- python3 -m http.server 8000

Guile Planet copyright (C) 2025 Ray Miller

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

CSS is based on Simple CSS by Kev Quirk.

Copyright (C) 2020 Simple.css (Kev Quirk)

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